The September 2010 edition of The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), which provides profiles, ratings and rankings for 75 financial centres, highlighted a familiar trend noting that Asian centres continue to exhibit good growth with Shanghai entering the top 10 and Seoul gaining four places and moving into the top 25 for the first time.
Outsiders have struggled to understand China since (at least) Marco
Polo. The western appetite for information on China now exceeds the
demand for Chinese food; sometimes it seems a new book promising to
unlock the mysteries of China’s surging economy, political system, or
society appears daily.
The Cayman Islands has, in recent times, proved itself an increasingly popular jurisdiction for the incorporation of companies owned or operated by parties located in Asia. There are a number of reasons for this popularity.
Both Cayman and the BVI play a huge role in offshore regional business
and finance and there are significant capital flows between Caribbean
offshore jurisdictions and in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Cayman vehicles have played a significant role in bringing foreign capital to China over the past two decades and continue to do so despite the changing regulatory environment – and now they are being used to take Chinese capital to the world.
If one searches “western misunderstanding of China” in Chinese language
at Baidu, the Chinese equivalent to Google, you would find more than
250,000 entries.
As soon after the arrival of the financial crisis as late 2008, and throughout 2009 governments and economists across the globe predicted that in 2010 the world economy would be coming out of recession and growth would return.
In an article that I wrote for the April 2010 issue of Cayman Financial
Review, I set out the reasons why I share Buffett’s view, except that I
explained why it applies to the broader Asia ex Japan region that
comprises nearly half the world’s population.